Day 21: St. Augustine, FL

Sheeeesh. Composing that post yesterday was no easy feat. By the end of it, the soggy keyboard had deteriorated, and not only was the "M" not working, but most of the other letters and commands had gone on strike as well. It was all I could do to pound out the last couple of paragraphs.

Keith to the rescue! This morning, while the girls and I were getting dressed, he and Charlie ran to Target and picked up a Bluetooth keyboard and magically connected it to my laptop. Problem solved, for the moment! Now I can type words like "margarita" and "Mexican food" and "camp" and "bellman" with reckless abandon. Mmmmmmmarvelous.

In the meantime, first-thing this morning I used my phone to log in to Frommers.com, which helped me sort out the worthwhile sights to see. I mean, making sure we get to the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument (a National Park Service site) and skipping the Ripley's Believe It Or Not museum is a no-brainer for us. (This paragraph would have been a bitch yesterday.) But beyond that, faced with dozens and dozens of historical museums and landmarks here -- from the oldest house in Florida to a scale reproduction of the Alhambra, Spain's most famous castle, to the "Authentic Old Jail," to the Fountain of Youth Archeological Park -- I needed a guide to help us pick out the most relevant and rewarding St. Augustine experiences and avoid the cheeseball tourist traps.

We walked the few blocks to the Castillo right after breakfast and spent a couple of hours exploring, completing Junior Ranger activities and listening to a presentation by Ranger Mike. The fort was built in the late 1600s from coquina, a limestone made mostly from crushed seashells, which was quarried from nearby Anastasia Island. Through the centuries of war and occupation by Spain, then England, then Spain again, the U.S., the Confederates and the Union,  the fort is still standing today because its relatively soft bricks didn't shatter when they were struck with enemy fire; instead, the walls absorbed it. Think of a bb shot into Styrofoam.

The Castillo itself is massive, shaped almost like a star with pointed bastions at each corner, set right on the shimmering, strikingly blue Matanzas River. The setting is spectacular.







Great news! In the gift shop, we found another National Park Matching Game to replace the one that was in the trailer. I know you all are immeasurably relieved.



After touring the Castillo, we went across the street to the St. Augustine Pirate & Treasure Museum, which seemed more like a Disney-ized attraction to me, with its animatronic pirates and swashbuckling soundtrack resounding throughout the galleries. But apparently the exhibits have actual street cred. The museum is the pet project of Pat Croce, former owner of the Philadelphia 76ers, who is obsessed with pirates and has amassed quite a collection of pirate artifacts. Eight-hundred of so of them are on display here, including the oldest pirate-wanted poster and the world's only authentic pirate chest. Most of the exhibits are hand-on and interactive, so of course, the kids had a blast.



Next up was the Lightner Museum, housed in the former Hotel Alcazar. The design of the building was inspired by a hotel of the same name in Sevilla, Spain, and featured an indoor swimming pool reputed to be the largest in the world when it opened in 1888. In 1947, antique collector Otto C. Lightner bought the building to exhibit his vast collection. Upon his death, he bequeathed the museum and its contents to the city of St. Augustine, and, as he requested, he was buried in the courtyard.

Once we got our head around the idea of the museum -- basically it is a collection of collections -- of everything imaginable -- like an art museum meets a garage sale -- we had loads of fun exploring. On the first floor, we found galleries devoted to music, science and Victorian collections featuring displays of everything from rocks and minerals, sea shells, Native American artifacts, phonographs, spoons, dolls, cameras, napkin rings, top hats, Victorian-era valentines and decorations made with human hair -- apparently all the rage in the late 19th century -- as well as a few oddities including an Egyptian mummy and a shrunken head.

An actual shrunken head.

We found three more floors upstairs packed with more collections -- mostly in the decorative arts: cut glass bowls, German porcelain figurines, Tiffany windows, needlepoint, and artwork made from cigar labels, and beer bottle labels, and buttons. Some of the galleries had been restored to showcase how they looked in the hotel's heyday -- the Russian steam room, for example, and the Turkish baths (which, for the kids, brought disturbing memories of our bathhouse experience at Hot Springs National Park last year) and the vast top-floor ballroom overlooking the pool four stories below.

This is a giant mural made up of cigar labels.

Don't even ask.

Russian steam room.

One of the docents chatted us up, asking where we're from and where we're headed to next. The kids have known that we're headed to Orlando tomorrow, but we've been stringing them along for the last three weeks, telling them that we won't be visiting the theme parks while we're there, and instead we'll be camping in a state park and doing some hiking. This, of course, is an outright lie and a sad, strange form of torture that Keith and I enjoy putting the kids through, and while I think that they believe that we are actually capable of dragging them all the way to Orlando for the express purpose of not visiting the theme parks, I also think that they have been holding out hope that maybe we've just been pulling their legs. So when I told the docent that we are headed to Orlando next, and when she asked if we would be going to Disney World, I could see their little ears perk up and pay attention to my answer -- especially since I was speaking with a very polite, friendly museum docent. I wouldn't dare pull her leg, too, would I? I answered, "No, no Disney World, not this time," crossing my fingers and hoping that I won't get parenting demerits for lying to an adult in front of my kids. I could sense their bodies sagging in defeat.

After afternoon pooltime and more margaritas, we went out for tapas for dinner. (That's code for "Keith and I ate tapas for dinner, and the kids ate slices of baguette.") Tired of tormenting these poor children, I finally filled them in on the plan: We're headed to Orlando, yes. We're staying at Disney's Fort Wilderness Campground. Yay! We're spending Thursday at Legoland in Winter Park. YAY! On Friday we'll go see the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios. YAY! And we'll spend Saturday at one of the Disney waterparks. Yipppee! The kids were overjoyed.

And they told me that they had been on to me from the beginning. There's no state park in Orlando, they said; there are only theme parks. True dat.